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Finite size scaling, proton intermittency and the QCD critical point
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Europe/Zurich
CERN
CERN
Description
We employ the recently introduced Ising-QCD partition function (N.~G. Antoniou {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. D 97, 034015 (2018)) to study in detail the behaviour of the moments of the baryon-number within the critical region around the critical endpoint. We first estimate the finite-size scaling (FSS) subregion which turns out to be very narrow in both the chemical potential and the temperature direction. Then, based on the relation of finite-size scaling in real space with intermittency in transverse momentum space, we identify the crucial phenomenological characteristics of the baryon number moments which can signal the proximity to the critical point in current ion collision experiments. We clearly demonstrate that combined measurements of the intermittency index $\phi_2$ and the freeze-out parameters $\mu_b$ (baryochemical potential), $T$ (temperature) constitute a powerful tool to detect the critical point. Furthermore, using published experimental results for $(\mu_b,T,\phi_2)$ in A+A collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=17.2$ GeV (NA49 experiment, CERN-SPS), we are able to make a set of predictions for the freeze-out states of Ar+Sc and Xe+La collisions at the same energy in the NA61/SHINE experiment (CERN-SPS). In particular, we find that the Ar + Sc system freezes out outside the FSS region but very close to its boundary, a property which may leave characteristic traces in intermittency analysis.
